U.S. Pat. No. 7,775,521 (to Itkis, et al.), incorporated herein by this reference for all purposes, discloses an automatic ball blower including a pressurized ball return tube that sequentially accumulates balls drawn from the ball-mixing chamber during a gambling game, such as bingo, keno and lottery, and releases the accumulated balls into the mixing chamber at the end of the game. The balls extracted from the mixing chamber during the game are carried, one-at-a-time, by a computer-controlled, motorized carriage towards the inlet of the ball return tube. Although the ball return tube surrounding the mixing chamber, like a staircase, preserves the valuable history of the balls drawn during the game, it substantially increases the cost of the automatic ball blower, and requires a separate, auxiliary pump for a controlled pressurization of the ball return tube that, unfortunately, increases the level of noise generated by the automatic ball blower.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to simplify an automatic ball blower; reduce the noise generated by an automatic ball blower; and also reduce the cost of an automatic ball blower while providing all of the desired benefits.